


A Devil's Office

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Season 9 Rewrites and Musings [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Demonic Possession, Episode: s09e03 Daemonicus, F/M, Rewrite, Season/Series 09, Those tags look weird next to each other, a little domestic fluff, au-ish, casefile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: "...a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office."Or: I rewrote "Daemonicus" because slogging through Season 9 is going to kill me unless I can occasionally fix it.Featuring consistent characterization for Doggett, deeper characterization for Reyes, Scully as an actual person instead of a weird, symbolic plot device, and Mulder in person.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to write this to be understandable without knowledge of the episode (and without borrowing great hunks of dialogue). Let me know if I'm failing. My gratitude to "Inside the X" for letting me do my research without having to suffer through this episode innumerable times.
> 
> The title and summary quote are taken from _The Scarlet Letter_. The Mulder family biography always reminds me of Hawthorne.

_Mountjoy Residence_  
_Jones Springs, WV_  
_August 12, 2001_  
_3:00 PM_

The setting of the farmhouse was peaceful and bucolic, and the hint of impending autumn in the air would have made the Sunday afternoon outing pleasant if it weren’t for the knot of police cars and streamers of crime scene tape.

Monica Reyes surveyed the scene, noted some forensic techs bending over something a few hundred feet in front of the house. She had pulled up at dozens of similar crime scenes, and there were no outward signs that this one was any different. And yet, something prickled at the back of her neck as she got out of the car. She observed it, considered it, and tried not to jump to conclusions.

John had called her about two hours ago from DC. “They’ve got somethin’ for us. Sounds like it’s up your alley—satanic staging.”

She ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, climbed the steps to the porch, and walked into the house. It had once been decorated in a simple, rustic style. The furniture around the entryway had been overturned, and she could see the signs of some sort of struggle. Techs were working in the rooms of the house, and light bulb flashes registered in the corner of her eye. She looked for her partner in the rustle of activity; she couldn’t see him yet.

The prickling sensation in the back of her neck was still there. And it wasn’t the usual morbid anticipation that accompanied studying the scene of a murder.

The bodies were over in the corner, seated at a table. The local police were right; this was standard satanic staging. Almost textbook. She directed her mind to focus on her training and her studies as she took in the room from a distance. The couple were positioned across from each other, the gun in the woman’s hand. It was meant to look like a murder-suicide. Ritualistic staging.

The sense of dread was getting worse.

_Something’s wrong_.

She tried to ignore it, walking closer to the bodies, taking in their injuries. A gunshot through the head of the male. The Scrabble board was laid out between them, as if they were innocently sitting down to a game—empty but for a single, foreboding word: _Daemonicus_.

_Latin: Satan, demon possession_

Some unnamed instinct within her bid her to look up. Monica was used to trusting her instincts, but she couldn’t tell if this one was actually hers—as she raised her eyes, the ceiling fan suddenly halted the lazy circles it had been tracing on the ceiling.

_What—_

“Reyes!” John Doggett’s voice cut through the unformed question in her head, and she turned around abruptly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Even as she and John discussed the layout of the scene and reviewed details _(Darren and Evelyn Mountjoy, their dog dead out front, no enemies, no signs of motive other than the apparent ritualism, two perpetrators)_ , she found herself unable to shake the nagging feeling in the back of her head. She had studied cases like this before—numerous ones. But even though all of its individual aspects were familiar, there was something _different_ about this one. The ceiling fan bothered her more than she expected it should, and she didn’t know how to explain that to John in a way that she thought he would understand.

She had always been _intrigued_ by what Dana Scully liked to call “extreme possibilities,” and she believed in feelings, hunches, and was willing to entertain a great variety of metaphysical theories of the universe. She felt that being open to and welcoming the diversity of existence paid dividends in heightened perception, if not quite enlightenment.

Whatever this was, however, she did not welcome it. The very aura of the room seemed insidiously wrong.

She was contemplating this, trying to turn it over in her head until she could articulate it, when the medic who had slipped into the room with a gurney let out a sudden yelp of surprise.

He was backing away from the body of Evelyn Mountjoy. John, with his customary grim resolution in the face of horror, stepped forward and pulled back the cardigan of the dead woman.

The cardigan had been hiding the ravaged condition of her torso—her front was covered in blood. Even as Monica and John stood silently and tried to absorb this new development, the front of the woman’s body started to move, and two small snakes squirmed their way out.

That was a new one, even to Monica. She and John stood and gaped for a minute. When she regained the power of speech, her voice was considerably steadier than she felt. “I guess it’s a good thing we know someone with experience in demonic autopsies.”

* * *

_FBI Laboratory_  
_Quantico, VA_  
_August 13, 2001_  
_11:15 AM_

Dana Scully stood in her familiar scrubs, peering down at two dead bodies.

Two dead bodies apparently killed by _demonic possession_.

That was familiar, too, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

She hadn’t been back from maternity leave for long, and she was still trying to get a feel for her new assignment at the Academy. She hadn’t taught regularly since before her work on the X-Files, and part of her still missed the field, missed actively working to unravel mysteries, missed the intellectual intercourse of working with Mulder.

When Reyes and Doggett had approached her after her morning class to ask her to autopsy two bodies (apparently _possessed_ bodies), she felt a small, familiar tingle of curiosity at the new problem before her. And she felt oddly at home, back in her scrubs, over the autopsy table. But the small taste of the past made the adjustment worse—made her homesick for her old job and the X-Files.

She was also more literally homesick for her own small family. Leaving William had been hard, especially when his response to her goodbye the first day that she had gone back to work had been to cry and grab for her when she pulled away. She had felt very much like crying, herself. Mulder had looked a little helpless when faced with a teary Scully and a wailing son at the same time. He had settled for putting a still-crying William down carefully in the baby seat now semi-permanently installed in a corner of the living room, telling him in a calm, soft voice that they would talk later, and then crossing quickly to the doorway and pulling Scully into a tight hug. He had assured both of them, quietly and repeatedly, that everyone would be OK.

It had seemed like one of his more outlandish theories at the time, but it had so far proven correct. William had been just fine after spending the day with his father when she had returned home that first evening and every subsequent one, and the pain of absence was partially soothed by the warmth of Mulder’s affectionate greeting upon her return. Leaving in the morning had become gradually easier, but she still had to fight the irrational pang that she was abandoning her son.

Performing these autopsies for the X-Files now, she was reminded of just how much she missed Mulder at work—his lingering presence around the edges of the autopsy bay as he tried to simultaneously theorize over her results and avoid seeing in too much detail how she arrived at those results.

She gave herself a mental shake and refocused her attention on the work before her.

* * *

_An FBI Fleet Sedan_  
_I-66 W_  
_August 13, 2001_  
_1:00 PM_

Monica pondered while she drove to the West Virginia psychiatric hospital that suspected an escaped patient could be one of the murderers.

She still didn’t know what she thought about this case. She had been glad to have Dana’s experience in performing the autopsies, and the autopsies _had_ yielded useful facts about the mode of death. But despite John’s almost-condescending conclusions that hard evidence eliminated all possibilities of paranormal involvement, Monica didn’t think those facts had actually gotten them any closer to figuring out who (or what?) had committed these crimes. Or why.

She also couldn’t explain the source of her insight that Darren Mountjoy had been forced or tricked into shooting his wife. But at least it had come in a flash of the type of intuition she was used to—it wasn’t the poisonous, creeping feeling that she had experienced at the Mountjoy residence.

Dana hadn’t seemed too fazed by Monica’s views on the case. (Maybe she was used to listening to unconventional theories.) John had simply been resolutely unconvinced, almost annoyed.

Monica, however, found that she was beginning to doubt herself and her own instincts, even after the validation she had received from Dana:

_“Agent Scully, have you ever sensed what I'm talking about?”_

_“I've felt things that I couldn't understand. Things that I was afraid to admit even to myself.”_

_“And what did you do?”_

_“I learned not to ignore it... to trust my instincts.”_

Dana Scully certainly spoke from the position of hard-won experience. But trusting in such unprecedented instincts was proving difficult. Especially after it had been almost a day since she had felt them—the paralyzing certitude had loosened its grip on her soul. Maybe she had simply been spooked. But she couldn’t honestly just write them off, either.

It annoyed her that John refused to take her experience into account while dismissing her theories. She wasn’t a starry-eyed, inexperienced young agent who had a crush on her new assignment. And John Doggett _knew_ that, dammit. They had worked together before, and he generally trusted her, even when he disagreed with her. She had worked dozens of satanic cases, and she had _never_ found that any of them were the result of legitimate satanic or demonic activity. She had never even _suggested_ it in any of her reports. Shouldn’t that make him take her theories on this case _more_ seriously, rather than _less_?

He sat silently in the passenger seat now, re-reading case documents and making an occasional note.

She wished she could decide what to do, and she wished she felt that she could genuinely discuss her unease with her partner. 

* * *

_Scully/Mulder Residence_  
_Georgetown, Washington, DC_  
_August 13, 2001_  
_4:30 PM_

The nice thing about teaching at Quantico was that her hours could flex around her class schedule, and, outside of her office hours and investigative lab work, she could do most of her out-of-class work at home. The less-nice thing was that Quantico to Georgetown was an hour worth of commute.

Mulder had raised the option last week of temporarily relocating to Alexandria. “I’m still renting my old apartment—there’s nothing stopping us from staying there for awhile. I know it’s smaller than this one, and there’s only one bedroom, but if you’re gonna be in Quantico, the commute would be a lot shorter. I imagine we’ll need to find a bigger place than either apartment, anyway. We could stay in Alexandria while we look.”

She had considered this. “Maybe. But it would be a pain to move all of Will’s things. Even temporarily.”

He had shrugged. “Just something to consider. We could buy a second set of baby supplies, if it came down to that.”

She had almost made a joke about not having grown up with multiple family residences and being unused to this level of luxury (as if his small, shabby apartment constituted luxury). The joke carried an unacceptable risk of making him cringe, however, so she had kept it to herself.

After her morning consult for Doggett and Reyes, she had changed out of her scrubs and taught her afternoon class before heading home for the day. When she got back in the late afternoon, the apartment was quiet and still. She peeked into the bedroom to find William sleeping in his crib and Mulder sleeping sprawled across the bed. He had evidently been attempting to read what looked like a particularly esoteric treatise on parapsychology. He was still wearing his glasses, and the book had fallen open on his chest.

The scene was cozy and inviting. She quietly and swiftly divested herself of her work clothes, removed Mulder’s glasses and his book before either got bent, and slipped in beside him.

He stirred a little at that, opened one eye to look at her, and mumbled, “That better be you, Scully.”

“Of course it’s me—go back to sleep.”

A small smile flitted over his mouth, and he shifted over to give her more space to settle in before shifting again and removing that space, draping himself against her with a contented sigh.

Sleeping with Mulder (the actual sleeping part) usually meant sleeping without space. _(“Sorry. Slept on a couch too long,” he had explained once, which really didn’t explain anything, since a couch would have trained him to sprawl less, rather than more.)_ She suspected he didn’t want to be without her, even in sleep. And now, after she had been forced to soberly plan for a future without him, had bravely prepared to spend the rest of her life with an unremitting ache where he had once been, she found that she no longer wanted to sleep with space between them, either.

* * *

_John Doggett’s Residence_  
_Falls Church, VA_  
_August 13, 2001_  
_9:45 PM_

John Doggett was frustrated, which increasingly seemed to be his new lot in life.

At least they were getting some traction on the case. The consultation with Dr. Monique Sampson at the West Virginia state mental hospital had yielded two suspects. Two perfectly _human_ suspects. The escaped patient, Dr. Richmond, certainly seemed like he had the sick sort of imagination necessary to set up the demented theatrics of the Mountjoy crime scene. He had gotten himself locked up for stitching strychnine tablets in the stomach lining of his patients. Maybe snakes in the thoracic cavity came next. Dr. Sampson seemed to think they might.

The missing guard, Paul Gerlach, was more of a mystery. Dr. Sampson couldn’t offer any insight about why he might have joined forces with a patient to commit grisly murders, and neither could any of the rest of the staff they had interviewed. But he had gone missing at the same time as Dr. Richmond had managed to escape. The connection wasn’t a reach.

The staff were all uneasy—shaken, jumpy, and confused, which John could understand. It was never easy to find out that one of your coworkers had possibly become a particularly creative murderer, or at least a very involved accomplice. Gerlach had, apparently, kept to himself, but otherwise seemed like a regular guy.

John had long ago lost track of the number of regular guys who kept to themselves who had gone on to commit heinous crimes.

They hadn’t learned too much from the patients, either. Dr. Richmond’s neighbor, Josef Kobold, had made noise about needing protection from the Devil, but said very little of value. John was worried Monica might read into Kobold’s words—assign them a deeper significance than a sick mind (in a psychiatric hospital, no less) trying to make sense of the weird, unsettling rumors that had doubtlessly passed through the facility on the escape of Dr. Richmond, the disappearance of Paul Gerlach, and the subsequent FBI investigation.

Monica seemed to be maddeningly determined to find a literal demonic facet to this case, whether it was justified or not. Gerlach’s lack of prior criminal tendencies had only strengthened her convictions, as did Richmond’s apparent lack of interest in satanism. Somehow, the less likely it seemed that either of the chief suspects would commit a demon-related crime, the more likely Monica found demon-related crimes.

He wished she could have at least avoided sounding quite so cheerfully eccentric when she was quizzing Dr. Sampson about the finer points of satanic technique and how they did (or, in this case, didn’t) relate to Dr. Richmond. The X-Files already had a questionable reputation as a serious crime-solving unit—no need to add a swagger to it.

He was honestly disappointed in Monica. He had known her for several years now, and he had always found her to be reliable. She might be a little loopy for his taste, sometimes, but he had never thought her to be anything less than a fully-competent agent. He didn’t know why she was suddenly departing from everything she had studied up until this point to try to pull a genuinely satanic case out of something horrifically ordinary.

In the end, John cared far less about _why_ Gerlach and Richmond decided to commit a particularly demented double-homicide. He just wanted to make sure it didn’t go any further.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original episode is supposed to take place in and around Weston, WV, with apparent constant treks back to Washington, DC. Weston, WV is about five hours from Washington, DC. I tried to make it work for awhile, but I eventually gave up and moved it.
> 
> If anyone can tell me where Doggett lives, you will earn an edit and my admiration. Because I tried to find out and couldn't. [Found it! Falls Church, VA. It's in "Audrey Pauley."]


	2. Chapter 2

_John Doggett’s Residence_  
 _Falls Church, VA_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_5:45 AM_

The ring of his cell phone woke John up from a strange dream in which he had been chasing a phantasm that always seemed to vanish whenever he tried to look directly at it.

He had time to remind himself that he didn’t believe in prophetic dreams before he answered the phone. “John Doggett.”

“Agent Doggett? This is Monique Sampson from the Chessman State Mental Hospital—we talked yesterday?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I’m sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but I was informed by the night staff that one of the patients you spoke to yesterday—Josef Kobold—became extremely agitated early this morning. He’s apparently also been asking specifically for you. I’m on my way to the hospital now, and I know you told me to call if anything happened...”

“Right, thanks for callin’. I’ll get my partner, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He looked over at the clock on his nightstand and sighed. _Goddamn this case_.

* * *

_Monica Reyes’s Sedan_  
_I-270 N_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_6:30 AM_

There were both advantages and peculiarities to cases that were close enough to DC to commute back and forth. Monica was still getting used to the luxury of having the full resources of FBI headquarters, as opposed to the more limited support to be found in field offices or local police departments. Having Dana Scully on standby to do the autopsies (and provide experienced opinions) was a definite advantage.

The peculiar part was that, after a mad scramble to get ready and get to John’s house to pick him up on her way out of DC, they now had about an hour of downtime before they got to the hospital.

“Why do you think he’s asking for you?”

John shrugged. “I told him we could protect him, didn’t I? Maybe he decided to take me up on it.”

“You _also_ told him that you didn’t believe in the Devil, which meant, in his view, that you _couldn’t_ protect him. And didn’t Dr. Sampson say he was extremely agitated?”

John turned to give her an appraising look. “Maybe he was hopin’ I’d  bring _you_. I don’t know, Monica. It’s a lead, all right? He’s a sick man—maybe he knows something and the guilt of keepin’ it to himself eventually got to him. I’ll be glad to get a little more traction on this case, but I’m not gonna sit in this car and try to figure it out before we even get there.”

Monica wasn’t sure if they should be glad about this development or not.

* * *

_Chessman State Mental Hospital_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_7:30 AM_

Dr. Sampson greeted them at the entrance and escorted them quickly down the hallway. “He keeps saying  ‘Prince of the Apostles’ over and over again. I don’t know what it means. I had to restrain him for his own safety, and I thought it was best not to sedate him until you speak to him.”

John and Monica followed her into a small padded room with a bed, on which Josef Kobold was lying in four-point restraints.

John went for a non-threatening tone. “Mr. Kobold, it’s John Doggett.”

“He’s speaking to me. Whispering in my ear.” The man peered at them, twisting his head under the forehead strap.

Monica took over. “What’s he saying to you, Mr. Kobold?”

“He’s killed again.”

“Who?” Monica probably _was_ the better person to hold this conversation.

“I don’t know. But I can show you.”

_Of course you can._ John nodded shortly, “OK, Mr. Kobold. Let me talk to Agent Reyes, here, and we’ll get back to you on that.”

Kobold closed his eyes and started muttering “Prince of the Apostles” again.

Outside the room, John turned to Monica. “You really think we should take him outta here?”

“Why wouldn’t we? Maybe he can help us.”

“Or _maybe_ he’s just tryin’ to get outta that cell. You know, Monica, this is the oldest trick in the book.”

“And what if he _does_ know something? Are we really going to give that up based on the chance that it _might_ be a trick? Didn’t you just say on the way over here that this was at least a lead? Do you have any better leads we could be following at this moment?”

John sighed in frustration, but had to admit that she was right. _A road trip with a crazy murderer is just what this morning was missing._

* * *

_Outside Harpers Ferry, WV_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_8:30 AM_

Kobold had been quiet when they left the hospital. His only comments had been sedate directions from the back seat of the unmarked police car that John was driving. They had been given a police escort, and Kobold was manacled, but he had so far shown no inclination to escape.

Monica felt her neck prickling again. That unnatural feeling of dread was back, which was unfortunate. She was hoping it had been a figment of her imagination. This time, it seemed to get stronger the longer they drove, the closer they got to...whatever it was they were going to see.

_Something’s wrong._

She glanced back at Kobold, but he was simply staring out the window and looking at the sky with unnerving intensity. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected to see.

“Stop here,” he directed.

John stopped the car, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out. He walked around to Kobold’s door and allowed the prisoner to walk a short distance from the car before beginning a brusque conversation. Monica climbed out of the passenger seat and walked a little distance away, looked around at the wooded landscape. She took a deep breath, was reassured that she could still breathe.

_Something’s wrong_.

John had apparently had it with Kobold, and sent him back to the car before beckoning to her, “Agent Reyes?”

They walked in the direction Kobold had pointed, disagreeing as they went. John still wasn’t ready to think this was anything more than a trick.

Monica was getting steadily more distracted by the intensity of what she was starting to think could only be undiluted evil. She wondered if Kobold had started as a willing medium of that evil, or if he had tried to harness something he foolishly thought he could control. Was he trying to atone for that now, helping them with his ill-gotten insight?

And then, suddenly, she saw it. A corpse, hung upside-down from a tree, tied by its feet. Blood ran down the ruined torso and dripped from the hands.

She and John paused and stared silently for the second time in three days. She had seen far worse things in her career, so why did the reflexive horror she felt now seem so uniquely stifling?

“Right,” John was the first to come back to himself. “I’ll go call this in, get the techs to send the body to Quantico. Let’s go take our friend Kobold back to his cage.”

Whatever was going on, Monica was beginning to doubt a cage was going to help.

* * *

_Chessman State Mental Hospital_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_1:30 PM_

John brooded in the lobby of Chessman hospital as he waited for Monica.

The day was only half over—they still had an autopsy to go attend. So far, it had not been one of his better days on the X-Files, and he doubted the autopsy would improve it at all.

When they had arrived back at the hospital, they had escorted Kobold back to his cell. Kobold, apparently banking off the success of his demonstration, had told them that he wanted to help them further in their case. But he would only be able to do it if he was in a large, airy space with the ability to see the sky. Apparently prison put a crimp in his mystical powers.

This was such an obvious ploy that John couldn’t believe Monica would entertain going along with it. He got pissed off when he realized that she had every intention of going along with it.

_“Look, even if you’re right, even if this man is faking it, he can help us. I’m not willing to turn my back on that. Are you?”_

John wasn’t, and Monica knew it. So Kobold had gotten his large, airy, windowed room. John had still insisted on having a special guard posted outside of it.

After Kobold had been transferred, he had, once again, asked specifically to see John. Which was how John had found himself nodding to Officer Custer at the door, and walking into Kobold’s newly-improved personal quarters. He had wondered if he’d be led to another body, but apparently Kobold had a different sort of conversation in mind.

_“Agent Reyes believes me. But you don't, Mr. Doggett.”_

_“It doesn't matter what I believe.”_

_“I’m wondering why a skeptic such as yourself would accept an assignment to an obscure unit of the FBI devoted exclusively to the investigating of paranormal phenomena.”_

_“You been checkin’ up on me, Professor?”_

_“Ordinarily, men do not pursue occupations against their own inclinations unless there's some strong countervailing reason. Seeking the love or approval of a woman, perhaps? Agent Reyes may have affection for you, but you for her? Of course it could be someone else... An Agent Scully introduced you to this assignment, didn’t she? Do you labor on, even after she’s left, in hopes she’ll eventually take notice of your steadfast reliability? Or maybe it’s something else. Some... dark secret from your past.”_

_“That's enough.”_

_“An unsolved tragedy for which you feel responsible. In some morbid way you haven't even admitted to yourself, perhaps you feel that... chasing ghosts will answer the questions which damn you.”_

That had crept too close to home, and the last thing John had needed was to stand still and absorb personal abuse from a psychopath, so he had abruptly excused himself and left Kobold to the company of an empty cell and Officer Custer on the other side of the door.

Now he was sitting in the lobby, waiting for Monica so that they could drive back to Quantico and get autopsy results from Scully.

John was hoping to at least get some more solid facts. 

* * *

_FBI Laboratory_  
_Quantico, VA_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_3:30 PM_

The solid facts were that the dead body was Paul Gerlach, apparent erstwhile accomplice to Dr. Richmond. He was wearing a demon mask. _How pointed of him._

The body had once again been staged post-mortem; Gerlach had been shot in the chest and then suspended upside-down. Scully, the Catholic, quickly connected the staging to Kobold’s ramblings. “Prince of the Apostles” was St. Peter, who had been crucified upside-down.  Monica added that the upside-down cross was an adopted symbol of Satanism, a reference to the power of the Antichrist.

And John was willing accept those conclusions, as far as they went. Whoever was committing these crimes was clearly playing around with satanic or religious imagery. It was Monica’s subsequent conclusion that Kobold must have the Devil on speed dial to be getting insights into the murders that he had a problem with.

“I don’t believe this,” he ground out.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe it,” argued Monica, restating a claim that John, himself, had made to Kobold earlier that afternoon. It was far more annoying when Monica made it.

“Look, it’s obvious that he’s had some hand in planning this, Reyes. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all.”

“But _why_?!” demanded Monica. “You think he was the one who somehow set up and coordinated this huge, elaborate scheme? Why would he do that? He went through all that trouble just to get a nicer cell? And _how_ do you think he did it? What kind of hold do you expect he could have over Gerlach and Richmond to control them like this?”

“So we haven’t figured out his method and motive yet. That doesn’t mean his knowledge of the crime scenes comes from _demon possession_ or some kind of—I don’t know— _satanic channeling_! What do you think, Agent Scully?”

“I actually haven’t made up my mind.” Scully was affecting a detached, neutral tone and expression, along with, apparently, a neutral theory. He had been hoping she would back him up in this debate. Even though she had been far more likely to entertain bizarre, outlandish hypotheses than John had expected of a hard scientist when he had initially worked with her, he had known her by reputation to be the skeptic in the X-Files office. He had wondered at the time how many of her more extreme arguments had been an attempt to voice her absent partner’s point of view, and if restoring Mulder to her might restore more of her natural skepticism.

_Well, there’s an idea._

“You think Mulder would talk to me about this one?”

“You want to talk to _Mulder_ about demon possession?” Dana Scully rarely blurted anything, but John could tell that she was taken aback.

“No. I want to talk to Mulder about manipulative murderers. I’m sure he’s used to gettin’ requests like that.” John glanced up at Monica. “Might help us figure out _why_.”

Scully shrugged as she peered back down at Gerlach’s body with a scientist’s focus, “I can certainly ask him.”

* * *

_Scully/Mulder Residence_  
_Georgetown, Washington, DC_  
_August 14, 2001_  
_6:30 PM_

Scully brought up Doggett’s request while she was feeding William, and Mulder was attempting to cook dinner.

“Doggett and Reyes have been over with a consult during the last few days.”

“Yeah?” She couldn’t read his voice; it might have been wary, or maybe he was simply concentrating on cutting vegetables.

She went on to relay the events and details of the case. Mulder listened in silence until she got to the part about the post-mortem staging of Gerlach, and Kobold’s apparent prediction of it. Then he interrupted her mid-sentence.

“‘Prince of the Apostles?’ Please tell me you don’t believe that.” His flat tone and the tension in his back should probably have impelled her to back off instead of pushing, but she was annoyed by the interruption and the insinuation.

“Personally, I don’t think there’s enough information to come to a conclusion yet, but why on earth not, Mulder? We saw far stranger things during our time on the X-Files. _This_ is where you draw the line?”

“ _Scully_...” There was a warning in his voice, but she suddenly didn’t find herself in the mood to heed it.

“Actually, Agent Doggett wanted to discuss the case with _you_.”

“John Doggett. Wants to talk to me. About Satanism. Monica Reyes is the expert in satanic cases. I don’t know why the hell Doggett wants to talk to _me_ about it.”

“He said that he wanted to talk to you about Kobold—” She was trying to keep her own voice calm, not wanting to upset William.

“You should know by now that I don’t believe in the Devil, Scully. Don’t pull me into some kind of religious nonsense.” His tone and words were cutting.

“They could use your help, Mulder.” _I miss working with you, Mulder._ Her tone was almost pleading now, and she resented that supplication was her reaction to his casual cruelty. She hadn’t at all anticipated this response, and his vehemence felt like a sharp, personal rejection—he had hurt her more deeply than he probably realized.

Before the argument could go any further, however, she smelled something odd. So, apparently, did Mulder. A muffled, “ _Shit_!” and then, “I burnt the pasta, Scully. It must be a sign from above. Or maybe below.” He wrenched the smoke detector off the wall before it could go off and opened the kitchen window with an unnecessary snap. “I’ll order takeout.” He didn’t quite stalk into the bedroom, but it was close.

He talked on the phone and left without a word, and she tried to reign in her seething frustration and anger. Fox Mulder, two months shy of forty, still had the tendency to handle his feelings by snapping at her and taking off.

But at least this time he wasn’t going far, and she knew he’d be back.

He hadn’t been loud in his fit of pique; he was cognizant enough of the fact they had a baby that he avoided excessive noise, but even that mediocre effort was for naught. William, as though sensing the turmoil between his parents, started crying. She spent the next half-hour attempting in vain to calm him. Her own mood was not assisting her; she could hear the aggravation and hurt bleeding through in her voice.

She realized now that a part of her had been selfish in pushing this request—let her own feelings of professional loneliness influence her. _(She’d almost forgotten what it was like to_ not _miss him, in one manner or another.)_ Mulder was still occasionally unsteady in reacclimating to the world and his own role in it. And though leaving the X-Files and the FBI had been his choice, she knew him well enough to anticipate that he would be acutely sensitive about it. But it was also true that Doggett and Reyes _could_ use his help before anyone else got killed. And furthermore, to heal properly, he _needed_ to occasionally interact with the world beyond his family. His complicated feelings didn’t justify the venom he had directed at her, and his defensive vindictiveness had always been spectacularly inconsiderate.

When he returned thirty minutes later, she looked up from her efforts at comforting William to glare wordlessly at him. Mulder looked abashed. He set the food on the kitchen table and approached slowly.

He sighed. “I’m sorry,” was the only thing he said, very quietly and sounding very tired. She had been preparing a lecture outlining _exactly_ all the ways in which he was behaving like an asshole, but she found the apology, coupled with the expression in his eyes, somehow rendered the tirade unnecessary.

“Here, let me take him. Go eat.” He kept the same quiet tone and held out his arms, gestured toward the kitchen with his head. She passed William to him and squeezed his arm as she went to the kitchen.

~

He stayed to his own side in bed that night; she couldn’t tell if that was his preference, or if he thought he was honoring hers.

“I’ll stop in to see Doggett when your mom’s here tomorrow,” he told her quietly.

She knew then, and she closed the distance between them, herself. His arms wrapped loosely around her in gratitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the maybe-two people who might notice this: This is where I've started to more seriously scramble the canon plot around, partially for pacing and later story implications, but a lot for logistics. (Seriously, how was Scully supposed to keep showing up at a crime scene five hours away for extremely flimsy reasons when she was a single mother?)


	3. Chapter 3

_X-Files Office_  
_Basement, J. Edgar Hoover Building_  
_Washington, DC_  
_August 15, 2001_  
_10:00 AM_

John Doggett made his way down to the X-Files office after submitting requests for law enforcement and medical records on both Dr. Richmond and Professor Kobold.

He was going to be alone in the office that day. After the autopsy of Paul Gerlach, Monica had suggested they split up. John would do background research back in DC and see what he could turn up. Monica would go back to West Virginia and, apparently, see what Kobold could turn up. Or something. John actually wasn’t quite clear on what she was planning to do, but given their divergent views on the case, pursuing different lines of investigation at this juncture made solid sense.

When he got to the basement, he found the X-Files office quiet and dark, but not quite deserted. A tall, lanky form was seated on the back table beneath the window, in the kind of affectedly casual posture that the cop in John innately recognized as a cover for tension.

“Mulder.” John was startled, but mostly able to keep it out of his voice as he flipped on the lights and studied his visitor. Fox Mulder still tended to regard him with a certain amount of aloof reserve, but even so, John could recognize a familiar fatigue in Mulder’s bearing. John remembered wearing that look himself, and it almost didn’t hurt anymore to recognize it in other parents. “You actually look pretty alert for a man with a three-month-old baby.”

A small smile played over Mulder’s features, and he thawed a bit, his posture becoming more genuinely relaxed. “Yeah, I’m used to not getting much sleep.”

“I didn’t realize you still had keys to this office.”

“I don’t.”

John willed himself not to stare. Maybe breaking into federal buildings was simply a hobby Fox Mulder was unwilling to give up.

Mulder quirked his mouth and chose to elaborate. “Janitorial staff let me in—they, uh, got to know me pretty well when I used to live down here.”

“I’m assumin’ that’s an exaggeration.”

“Not as much as you might think.”

A small pause, then, “I take it Agent Scully told you that I wanted to talk to you about this murder case with the staged bodies.”

“She mentioned it, yeah.  I have to say, Agent Doggett, I’m curious why _you_ would want to consult _me_ on a case like this.”

“It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I don’t think this case has any _literal_ connection to Satan or demonic influence. But Reyes—and even Scully—are givin’ that angle a lotta credit. _I_ think we’re fallin’ into some kind of sinister trap that I can’t get my head around.”

“You wanted to talk to me because you wanted a _skeptic_?”

“I wanted a profiler. I’ve read your profile on Luther Boggs. And your report on his execution. I suspect there’s somethin’ like that goin’ on here—I want to know what you make of this Professor Kobold.”

Mulder’s eyes sharpened, and he lost his detached air of superciliousness; he looked interested, almost in spite of himself. “Kobold. Is that given or assumed?”

“I’ve got no idea. Does it mean anything?”

“It’s a Germanic pagan sprite—belief in kobolds survived the Christianization of the region. They’re most commonly depicted as living in houses—relatively benign unless you piss ’em off, and then they might commit some domestic mischief like, say, making you burn your dinner. Kobolds have also been described as living underground—where they were held responsible for the dangers of mines—or on ships with sailors.”

John frowned. “Josef Kobold seems obsessed with _Christian_ mythology to me—never mentioned anything I’d associate with paganism.”

“Maybe he just has an unfortunate name.” The man named Fox shrugged. “Or maybe survival of a non-Christian force in a Christianized land might be symbolic to him. Either way, the only thing I’ve got to go on right now is my memory of Germanic folklore and a second-hand overview of the case from Scully. If you want my opinion, I’m gonna have to get a more thorough account from you.”

So John went over the case from the beginning, starting with Darren and Evelyn Mountjoy, through the various visits to Chessman Hospital, and his interactions with Josef Kobold. He hesitated for a moment before divulging the details of their last confrontation. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell Mulder that a psychopath had implied that he had an unrelenting, career-defining crush on his female colleagues, one of whom was Mulder’s...wife, really. But he couldn’t exactly justify leaving it out, so he pressed on.

Mulder didn’t seem overly bothered. His mouth flickered over something that might have been a smile. “Lemme guess, that’s also one of the reasons you wanted to talk to me, rather than Reyes and Scully?”

“It’s not exactly a _comfortable_ thing to bring up, now, is it?” John retorted before continuing with his narrative, concluding with the autopsy of Paul Gerlach. “There it is. What can you tell me?”

Mulder sighed, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the wall. “Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re right. Kobold is far more likely to be the earthly orchestrator of these murders than he is to be a conduit to Satan. As for a psychological profile... I can give you my impressions, but remember that they’re limited by the fact that I haven’t seen this guy at all or talked to him myself.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Go ahead.”

“What strikes me initially is that he seems to have a particular fixation on you. I’d guess that his interest originated from your initial, professed disbelief in the Devil, with whom he sees himself aligned in some way. Kobold’s not a man who likes being disbelieved or ignored—he believes he’s important, and he takes himself seriously.

“That’s probably where his twist on Christian mythology originates—it’s a popular creed, but he’s distorted it, taken a peculiar angle that distinguishes him from regular worshippers. Now he’s made himself a distinctive member of a large crowd, and he can also assume an air of righteousness. That ‘Prince of the Apostles’ display that he put on for you and Agent Reyes is the type of self-gratifying theater that will augment his own view of himself, but it was also designed for a very specific external audience: you. He wants to prove his significance to you, make you regret ever doubting him. He’ll get the most satisfaction from that—from besting a nemesis.

“After your initial contact with him, he did some research on your career. The fact that you’re on the X-Files despite your natural inclinations—which he would have picked up from your first interaction—is certainly interesting, but the rest of it is really nothing more than a cold reading. He’s trying to get insight into your weaknesses, probe you for a reaction. The fact that he chose what he did... His initial focus on romantic frustration makes me think that he’s probably got issues with women. Unrequited crushes on Scully and Reyes aren’t what I’d have gone with to explain why a man would devote so much time to a project that seems to go against his fundamental understanding of the world. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Scully’s an amazing woman, but it’s a little weak for driving motivation.”

“So what’s _your_ read on me, then?”

“You really want me to tell you?”

“Try me.”

“Most people who are attracted to the X-Files have some level of curiosity about the unknown. You, of course, got there a little differently...” Here Mulder faltered a bit, but recovered himself fairly quickly: shook his head as though to clear it, took a breath, and continued. “Getting assigned to the X-Files isn’t really the interesting part— _staying_ on the X-Files, though. That requires a different set of values altogether. In your case... You have a very highly-developed sense of integrity and justice. You won’t play games, and you won’t compromise, either. You get things done, but your drive for doing them the right way overrules your ambition. If the X-Files need a champion, you’re not gonna find it in yourself to just walk away and cover things up.”

“Well, that’s all very flattering.”

“I wasn’t quite finished. That unsolved tragedy Kobold started to probe for? The one that motivates you to continue pursuing causes that most people would write off as too difficult or futile? The one that drives you to give your strongest, most tenacious effort to finding other people’s loved ones for them because you _know_ the devastation of losing? Keep tabs on that tragedy, and know exactly where it is in your psyche. If you don’t keep aware and on top of your own weaknesses, Agent Doggett, men like Kobold will use them to break you.”

John regarded him with a flinty look. “That sounds like experience.”

“It is. If you read my report on Luther Boggs, I’m sure you read Scully’s on John Roche.”

~

_3:00 PM_

John was reading through the unsavory results of his record requests when there was a knock on the half-open office door, and a book was delivered via the internal mailing system. An academic monograph on the influence of Satan on Renaissance thought. Written in 1995 by one Professor Josef Kobold.

There wasn’t a note, but John knew exactly who had sent it. Trust Fox Mulder to know where to find the literal book on satanic influence.

* * *

_Chessman State Mental Hospital_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 15, 2001_  
_5:30 PM_

Monica Reyes wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting (or hoping) when she suggested that she spend the day in West Virginia while John stayed in Washington. She’d simply had an uneasy, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of neither of them being near to the mental hospital. Since she had gotten the _distinct_ impression that John was rapidly losing patience with Kobold and his predictions, she volunteered to go to Martinsburg, and left John to his more earthly researches using the resources of the Hoover building.

Her day had been mostly quiet, however. She had greeted Kobold briefly in the morning and quietly asked Agent Custer to come and get her if there were any disturbances. But if Kobold had any other dramatic revelations, he hadn’t chosen to share them with her. He had been distantly polite to her that morning—detached—and had exhibited no inclination toward talking to her at all.

She had spent most of her time in Chessman’s small employee lounge, reviewing the selection of satanic literature and case studies she had brought with her. Unfortunately, she still hadn’t managed to study her way out of thinking that this case had a genuinely satanic element to it.

By now, she felt stiff from sitting most of the day, and she was beginning to read sentences multiple times. She sighed, stood up to stretch, and contemplated getting dinner. She wondered at what point she should call it a day and head home—she still needed to call John to see if he had found any new leads to pursue; from there, they could hopefully plan their next step in the investigation.

As she was gathering her books back up, however, Officer Custer rushed into the lounge. His flustered expression put her on instant alert.

“Agent Reyes! It’s the Professor. He’s gone into some kind of trance again. I need to go find the doctor on night shift—Dr. Sampson’s gone home for the day.”

“Thanks.” Monica dropped her books, let them cascade into a messy pile on the floor, and hurried down the hallway toward Kobold’s room.

He had slumped into his bed, thrashing wildly and murmuring. Monica inched closer to hear his voice as his head moved back and forth.

“Medicus... medicus...”

_Latin: Physician_

Something pinged in the back of her mind. _“Dr. Sampson’s gone home for the day.”_

_Oh my God._

She ran from the room as Officer Custer hurried in with a doctor and two nurses.

* * *

_Monique Sampson’s Residence_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 15, 2001_  
_5:45 PM_

Monica pulled up outside Dr. Sampson’s house, brain on overdrive, hoping frantically that she wasn’t too late. The sirens approaching from the direction of the police station announced that the backup she had called in had also arrived.

_“Dr. Sampson’s house—where is it?!” She was out of breath from running, and she gasped the question at the front desk staff, who stood and stared at her a bit before she slammed her hand down on the counter. “_ Now _,_ _dammit! This is life or death.”_

_That seemed to snap them out of it, and they provided her with an address and rudimentary directions, which she called into the Martinsburg police department while tearing out of Chessman’s parking lot._

She scrambled out of the car, drew her gun, and stormed the house with the local officers. The front door had already been forced. _Too late...too late._

They fanned out to search the rooms, guns still at the ready. She entered a pleasantly-decorated room set up as a study. Tall windows overlooked the landscaped front yard, spilling incongruously cheerful sunlight into the room. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a desk set up with a high-backed office chair faced the windows.

_Something’s wrong_.

She realized, in the back of her mind, that the unnatural, crawling feeling had been creeping up on her ever since she had gotten the address from the desk staff. But she’d been hit with such a spike of adrenaline, it hadn’t managed to assert itself in her consciousness until now. _Or maybe it’s gotten so strong now that I can’t help but notice._

She took a deep breath, got a handle on her trepidation, and inched toward the desk until she could see Monique Sampson, slumped and unresponsive, in the chair. Two hypodermic syringes projected from her face. More were scattered across the desk, as if her attacker had been interrupted.

Monica probed for a pulse, very gently, with the hand not clutching her gun. She found one, faint and thready.

“Call an ambulance! Get someone here as fast as you can! She needs help!”

* * *

_A Slightly-Shoddy Motel_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 15, 2001_  
_9:30 PM_

Monica collapsed wearily on the hotel bed. She hadn’t specifically planned to stay in West Virginia overnight, but experience had taught her to have a packed bag in the car, just in case.

By the time the police had finished sweeping Dr. Sampson’s house (no sign of Richmond; they had been too late to catch him); by the time she had been to the police station to give the forensic investigators pointers on what to look for (good thing she had so recently reviewed the literature); by the time she had been to the hospital emergency department to get an update on Dr. Sampson (unconscious, but likely to pull through), she was exhausted and entirely unequipped to make the drive home. Besides, there was plenty still to do tomorrow, and she could definitely use an early, rested start to the morning.

John was staying in Martinsburg, too; he had met her at around 8:00, in front of the hospital. She had called him as soon as she had been able to leave Dr. Sampson’s house, given him the shortest summary possible, and asked him to come up to West Virginia as soon as he could.

He had brought her dinner. A sandwich from a local deli. “Thought you might want somethin’ to eat—didn’t sound like you’ve had much down time this evening.”

“Thanks.” They had sat together on a bench outside the hospital doors, and she had sighed in gratitude as she bit into the sandwich; she hadn’t had the chance to realize how hungry she truly was.

“I can give you my recap now, while you’re eatin’. My day didn’t turn out as productive as yours, but I did find out a few interestin’ things about our friend Professor Kobold.”

“John, I know you still think Kobold’s some kind of master manipulator, but he just saved Monique Sampson from Dr. Richmond.”

“ _You_ just saved Monique Sampson from Dr. Richmond.”

Despite the fact that he had given her too much credit, Monica had been gratified by the recognition. John had been maddeningly close to patronizing on this case, and she was thankful for the return of his acknowledged esteem for her, even though it came in the form of disagreement with her theories.

But even still, after she had listened to his findings and launched into her own detailed retelling of the evening’s events, she had kept the recurrent impressions of poisonous, malevolent evil to herself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some oblique anti-Semitism in this chapter, but nothing terribly explicit.

_Chessman State Mental Hospital_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 16, 2001_  
_10:30 AM_

John mused that there was something darkly fitting about this case finally, literally covering him in projectile vomit.

He had come to Chessman that morning with Kobold’s treatise and a new determination to confront him about his role in all of this—how he knew about Dr. Sampson, for example. All he had gotten from Kobold had been more accusations and taunts, followed by a spectacular geyser of vomit.

He had sent Custer to get a medic then squelched stiffly down the hall, out to the car, and called Monica at Berkeley Medical Center.

_“Reyes.”_

_“It’s Doggett. Has the cavalry arrived yet?”_

_“Not yet, but they should be here soon.”_

_“Send ’em both to Chessman when they get here. I know you want Scully to look at Dr. Sampson, but Kobold just had some kind of strange fit, and I want her medical opinion on it.”_

_“Strange fit?”_

_“Sprayed vomit out like a fire hose and went into some kind of semi-conscious state.”_

_“John, that sounds like...”_

_“I really don’t care what it sounds like right now, Monica. Just send Scully over here when she arrives.”_

It was fortunate that he had stayed in Martinsburg last night and thus had a packed bag with a change of clothes in the car; he had grabbed the bag and made his way back into Chessman, to the restroom, where he proceeded to clean up the best he could, change, and attempt to salvage his suit.

When he walked back into the hallway, there was a debate raging.

“All I said, Mulder, is that the human stomach wouldn’t normally hold this amount of material.”

“Well, it apparently did, in this case. Where do you think all that came from?”

“That is precisely _why_ I’m thinking we should run tests on this substance: to tell us what it is.” Scully had a sample vial gripped in her fingers.

“It’s not the _D_ _evil_.”

“Maybe it’s ectoplasm. Some sort of psychic link,” suggested Monica, who had never been shy about jumping directly into a fray. John admired this about her when it wasn’t driving him crazy.

“I suppose that’s theoretically possible,” conceded Scully, who seemed to be thinking. “If so, it would have inorganic properties that were otherwise unexplainable.”

Mulder, highly indignant, “ _What_? No it isn’t; ectoplasm doesn’t work _anything like this_.”

John marveled that there was apparently an approved way for ectoplasm to work and cleared his throat.

Three pairs of eyes turned to him.

He brushed his hands down his front. “Well, that was fun.”

“Welcome to the X-Files,” smirked Mulder.

“Welcome back,” retorted John, eyeing the suit that Mulder was wearing. It looked expensive.

“Well, if you actually wanted me to talk to Kobold, I figured I’d better _look_ like a consultant. And don’t worry. I’ve gotten pretty good at cleaning vomit out of things over the last few months.”

“Interviewing Kobold should wait for a few hours,” interjected Scully, who was looking a bit longingly at the sample in her possession. “I talked to the medic on the scene, and did a cursory examination myself, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing physically wrong with him. But he’s fatigued and not currently in fit shape for an interrogation.”

Despite their argument, Mulder apparently couldn’t stop himself from smiling fondly down at her. “You just want to get that back to your lab, don’t you Dr. Scully?”

“Well...” She lifted her eyes to his, her responding smile subtle, but almost...coquettish, which wasn’t how John was used to thinking of Scully. At all.

_Is that what those two looked like as partners in the field? Good Lord._ But John had seen too much of Dana Scully’s desperate, grief-stricken loneliness to begrudge them their restored connection.

~

_11:00 AM_

Scully and Reyes had departed for Berkeley Medical Center, to check on Monique Sampson. And Scully had also been confident that she’d be able to find laboratory resources there.

“They’re affiliated with WVU, so they should have some equipment I can borrow for research,” she had explained.

Mulder had caught Doggett by the arm when the other man had moved followed them out. Doggett had the air of a man who was feeling perturbed by something, and Mulder doubted it was solely the shower in vomit.

“We’ll catch up,” he had assured Scully (and Reyes, but he was really talking to Scully). She had looked back at him, raised her eyebrow and shook her head a little, but continued on her way.

Once they had gone, Mulder turned to Doggett, who was looking at him curiously, but guardedly.

Mulder gestured down to the checkered ground beneath their feet. “Do you think a place called Chessman got a steep discount on black and white tiled flooring?”

“You kept me back here to discuss the _tile_?” Doggett sounded incredulous and also annoyed. So much for trying to break the tension.

“No, I actually wanted to ask what Kobold said to you.”

Doggett looked even more annoyed and just a touch uncomfortable. “Doubled down on the romantic insinuations. I’m just a flat-footed cop who can’t keep up with your easy good looks and Oxford education.”

“Why Agent Doggett, are you coming on to me? Because I’m flattered, but, you know, I’ve got a kid, and—”

“What?! _No_. And I’m not comin’ on to Agent Scully, either, by the way.”

“I’m not terribly worried about that.” This was true. He was not. If he had been beset by crippling jealousy every time he suspected that someone had a crush on Scully, he would have had distinct trouble functioning in the world long before now. _(Because if anyone knows how to be a functional human being, it’s you, isn’t that right, Fox?)_

He was, however, interested in elements of it, in an almost academic sort of way. The accusation was bothering Doggett more than he was attempting to let on, and Mulder wondered if this was because it was an insult to his honor, or if it was a little bit true.

Scully was Doggett’s colleague and coworker, and she was decidedly _not_ single (as unconventional as their relationship might appear to outside observers, Mulder knew that it was also patently obvious by now). He very much doubted that John Doggett made a habit of developing feelings for women who fell into _any_ of those categories.

So. Was it the very idea that he would pursue the least available woman possible that bothered Doggett, offending his ethics? Or was there a kernel of truth in the accusation that made him uncomfortable? And did Kobold have enough insight into Doggett to sense that this avenue of taunting would sting? Or was Kobold simply a madman who had issues with women, and he happened to luck into hitting a nerve?

Mulder did not say any of this aloud. Despite what Scully occasionally sighed at him, he did _not_ , in fact, give voice to every thought that popped into his head.

Doggett broke the silence with his own pronouncement. “I’m gonna go with your theory from yesterday: that he’s got serious issues with women. Which, by the way, turns out he manipulated six co-eds into trustin’ him and then put ’em through a meat grinder in his basement.”

“Oxford education, Agent Doggett.”

~

_2:00 PM_

Dana was still working in the labs at Berkeley. Her initial exam of Monique Sampson hadn’t found anything that the Berkeley emergency department had not. The syringes apparently contained the same anti-psychotic that Dr. Sampson had used to treat Dr. Richmond. Although they had interrupted Richmond in time to prevent Sampson from getting a fatal overdose, she was, unfortunately, still unconscious.

At Chessman, John and Monica stood behind one-way glass. Mulder was sitting on the other side of it at a small table. John spoke as he looked into the room. “Kobold is a depraved man, and I want you to see the extent of it.”

“Of course he’s depraved, but he’s also helpful.”

“Yeah—helpful at givin’ us clues to crimes he _planned_.”

She opened her mouth to contest this when the interrogation room door opened, and Josef Kobold was escorted into the room. Mulder gestured politely at the seat across from him, but Kobold ignored him, choosing to pace around the room, instead.

Mulder pulled a small notepad and a pen from his jacket pocket and started writing. He was wearing glasses—Monica wasn’t sure if this was to help him write, or if it was an affectation for Kobold’s benefit. Kobold approached the table and stared down at him with imperious intensity.

Mulder looked up, mildly. “My name is David Miller. I’m a behavioral therapist. The police asked me to talk to you.”

“I know who you are, Fox Mulder.”

“You _are_ highly intelligent, aren’t you, Professor Kobold?” Mulder scribbled in his notepad.

“And so are you...well, that’s what your academic record says, anyway. University of Oxford. BA with first-class honours in Psychology and Philosophy, straight into an MSc by Research in Experimental Psychology. But you left the academy to go into law enforcement. You still did well for yourself, though, at least at first—became a respected, if unconventional profiler, the rising star of the FBI. And then you decided to waste all that hard work and natural brilliance and dedicate your career to chasing things that no one else believes exist.”

Mulder continued to look blandly at Kobold. He almost looked bored. Monica figured that none of those jibes were particularly new.

Kobold seemed to be agitated by Mulder’s calm. He started pacing again. “You must have found some compelling things to make you stay for so long. And yet, after all those years and all that dedication, you just walk away. You’ve chosen not to believe _me_ , either, haven’t you?” He gave Mulder a shrewd look. “It wouldn’t come too unnaturally to someone with _your_ bloodline, though, would it? Rejecting revealed truths?”

Mulder’s jaw twitched a little, but he didn’t show any other signs of perturbation. He looked down and went back to writing. Without looking up, in the same monotone he’d been using throughout the interview, “I don’t personally believe in any of the purported truths you’re peddling, Professor. But I’m here to talk about you, not about me. Why would my personal lack of faith bother you?”

“You’re a resurrected miracle who’s doing an excellent job of playing Joseph to a child you have to know can’t possibly be yours. And yet, still, you walk away from truth. Why is that? You’re trying to tell yourself you’re content to be a mere consultant on a department that you once headed—that you once _lived_. Did you do it for her? For her child? You’re working for the man who’s lusting after her, you know. Maybe he’s not such a fool. Maybe she’ll reward the hapless devotion from Agent Doggett, after all. Is it your own self-sacrificing devotion that you think secures her love?”

Mulder’s knuckles had whitened around his pen. There was considerable tension in his restraint now. But his face was still neutral when he stood up straight to his full height, and stared Kobold down.

“That will be sufficient, Professor, thank you for your cooperation. I’ll have the guards escort you back to your cell now. It’s my professional opinion that the small, regular one will do.” An icy disdain had crept into his tone, and there was quiet malice in his eyes. Monica realized that he was enjoying this bit of power he had over Kobold. And he had no problem letting Kobold know it. She could suddenly see where Fox Mulder had gotten his reputation for arrogance.

Kobold held Mulder’s gaze, and then slipped into a quiet string of repetitive invective—He might as well have been mumbling “Prince of Apostles” again, except Monica hadn’t heard that many anti-Semitic slurs at once outside Academy lectures on hate crimes. The guards escorted him away. 

Mulder silently watched the spectacle, then unceremoniously snapped his pen in half once the door to the room had closed on Kobold’s voice. He slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket, left the interrogation room, calmly dropped the pen in the waste bin by the door, and used the notepad to beckon Monica and John to follow him down the hall. He led them into a small conference room. “Shut the door, would you?” he asked John in the same calm, steady voice he had been using on Kobold.

As soon as the door had clicked shut, Mulder punched the wall he had been staring at with considerable force. Then winced and cradled his hand as he turned around. Monica and John stared.

“I fucking _hate_ serial killers,” he said, as if in explanation. Then, with another wince. “Do me a favor and don’t tell Scully I did that?”

John looked dubiously at his hand. There was an ugly bruise already blooming across the knuckles. “She’s gonna notice _that_ anyway, Mulder, even if she wasn’t a medical doctor. That was solid cinderblock. Why the hell were you a profiler, again?”

“Because I fucking hate serial killers. But, you know, there’s a reason I generally only consult on these cases as a favor.”

“Speaking of consulting” said Monica, “what do you think?”

Mulder sighed, leaned against the wall, and crossed his ankles. He looked like he wanted to cross his arms but then thought better of it. “He seems to have significant issues with women, and he’s preoccupied with religion, which I probably could have told you without subjecting myself to...that. He’s a fucking unpleasant, self-important son-of-a-bitch, which I’m fairly sure Agent Doggett already found out, and he’s a well-rounded bigot to boot. He knew who I was by sight, which means he’s found a picture somewhere. He’s researched my career and background, just like he did with Doggett.

“But I don’t think he has any... _unnatural_ insight. It’s relatively simple to get records on my career and education, and on my mother’s family. And then you have my son’s birth certificate, plus my own death certificate and the bureaucratic nightmare of getting _that_ voided... which reminds me that I still owe Walter Skinner several very nice bottles of wine.”

“So you’re saying that Kobold has looked up this information on the two of you, and then he decides to do what? Taunt you with it?” Monica didn’t doubt Mulder, exactly, but she did want clarification.

“He’s essentially spun a narrative out of the surface facts that he managed to find. I think it’s more of a reflection of his internal logic than an indication of careful character study. Though the things he says may be deeply offensive—I don’t particularly enjoy being subjected to ethnic slurs and insults toward my partner,” he emphasized this with a gesture of his swelling hand, “there’s nothing very perceptive in it. He didn’t mention my sister at all, or—at risk of adding a broken nose to today’s injuries—Doggett’s son.”

John only said, very dryly, “I’m not gonna punch you in the face, Mulder. I don’t wanna break my hand.”

“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. I’ll keep that in mind.” Mulder looked down at his shoes and smirked a little, then back up and continued. “The conclusions he’s chosen to draw from the facts of our lives... There’s professional anxiety there, along with the romantic anxiety. He probably wasn’t as successful in his own career as he thought he deserved, and certainly less romantically successful than he thought he deserved. Since he’s such a conceited, narcissistic bastard, the disappointments of his life have to be specifically meted out against him by an outside, malicious force—Fate or God or Satan. And it would eventually become easy for him to rebel against that force by taking what he thought he was properly owed, in the form of female students.”

Monica had a sudden thought. “If you’re saying that what he knew came from research, why did he look up things on _you_? Do you think he knew he was going to talk to you?”

“That’s a good question. It’s possible he found some background on me in the process of studying Doggett’s career. But the volume of information he has... I had thought he focused on Doggett because Doggett wounded his pride by not believing him or fearing him. But now... I’m starting to wonder if he’s trying to bait the X-Files division—bizarre murders and all. And I honestly have no idea why he would do that.”

“If that’s true, why’s he fixated on you ’n’ me—why not Reyes? Or Scully?”

“He _is_ fixated on Scully, in a twisted sort of way. But men are the actors in his narrative. Women provide impetus or impediments, but they’re objects, not subjects.”

John shook his head with a sigh. “Well, whatever he’s got in mind, I don’t like the idea of just waitin’ around ’til he springs it on us. I think you and I better stay here again tonight, Monica. I’ll go call the motel.”

Monica nodded her agreement and watched John as he left. After the door had closed behind him, she turned back to Mulder. “Why would Kobold bring up the paternity of your son? There’s nothing in any public records that would indicate that Dana wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant.”

“You’re really not one to hold back on the personal observations, are you Agent Reyes?” There was a sharpness in his eyes.

She held his gaze. “It usually doesn’t do anyone any good when I do.”

Mulder sighed, sounding weary. “If he’s trying to spin a narrative where Scully’s the prize that Doggett and I are fighting over, it would make sense for him to cast doubt on William’s paternity. Or it might simply be a guess—a cold reading that’s trying to disconcert me based on the fact that Scully and I aren’t married. Of course, if there’s one person on this earth whom I trust, it’s Scully, so he’s not _that_ psychic. Or connected to the Devil or what-have-you.”

“He didn’t call you a cuckold—he called you Joseph. I don’t think he meant to question her fidelity. And I don’t think you’re entirely convinced that’s what he meant, either.”

Mulder uncrossed his ankles and pushed off from the wall. “Well, I sure as fuck hope that’s what he meant. Or else he managed to get a copy of her private health records, which can’t have been easy, and I would want to know, even more urgently, why he went to the trouble.”

“That’s not it, either,” Monica started to protest—she had hoped that _Fox Mulder_ , of all people, might be able to help her get a grip on the uneasy, creeping unnaturalness of this case.

Mulder simply gave her a hard look and left the room.

Monica peered down at the notepad he had left behind on the table. It looked remarkably like a shopping list, bordered by a doodle of a UFO being irradiated by an unseen force. 

* * *

_Berkeley Medical Center_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 16, 2001_  
_4:45 PM_

Fox Mulder didn’t actually think that he could hide his injured hand from Scully indefinitely. But he wasn’t looking forward to her finding out about it, and he was going to try to delay that revelation as long as possible.

It was the argument that distracted him enough to forget his good intentions of developing a newfound dexterity with his left hand. Up until that point, he had done an excellent job of keeping the right one carefully and nonchalantly tucked away, always a little out of Scully’s field of vision.

But then she started in on the chemical analysis of the sample she had collected from Kobold’s cell. And despite his best efforts to stay somewhat detached from a case he was only tangentially working, the temptation to argue with her was entirely too high. He wondered briefly whether they were making a scene in front of the new X-Files agents, then promptly decided that he didn’t care.

His interlude with Josef Kobold had very thoroughly reminded him of all the things he absolutely did not miss about working for the FBI. He was tired: so fucking tired of all of that shit. Beyond tired, really, and he felt that he had put in more time and tears and blood than anyone could reasonably demand of him.

But this? He missed this, and he had almost forgotten how much.

“It was hard to find, at first, because I wasn’t really looking for it. But this sample of vomitus that we took from Professor Kobold’s cell contains trace amounts of haloperidol—the same drug that was used to assault Monique Sampson, and the same anti-psychotic she had been using to treat Dr. Richmond.”

This was not as convincing as she seemed to think. “Well, maybe Kobold and Richmond were both being given the same drug.”

She gave him a look that implied he should not have doubted her on something so obvious. “They weren’t. I checked the treatment records. Besides, this is haloperidol decanoate—it wouldn’t have ended up in his stomach by any normal means; it’s the injectable formulation.”

“Let’s start with the abnormal means that don’t involve Satan.”

“I’m not making claims about the _origin_ of this; don’t put words in my mouth. But even the small amount that I found shouldn’t have been there, and, as of now, I have no good way to explain its presence. None of the reading or the tests I’ve done so far today have provided any satisfactory conclusions.”

He waved this off impatiently, only realized his mistake when her eyes zeroed in on the gesture and then narrowed.

_Oops. Busted._

“Mulder. What did you _do_?”

This was rhetorical. She knew what he had done, of course—his penchant for self-destruction was old news to her, and his method of choice was patently obvious in this case.

It was likely perverse, and quite possibly pathetic, that his primary emotion in that moment and the ones immediately following was a profound rush of feeling loved. She wasn’t being particularly gentle or tender as she took him by the forearm and herded him off into a small, adjoining supply room. Her eyes were exasperated, and she was briskly professional as she directed him to sit down and carefully examined, then began to wrap, his hand and wrist.

But love was what he felt, nonetheless. Her steady, practical care of him was a manifestation of quiet, constant devotion, respect, and deep affection. The warmth of it had a tendency to overwhelm him these days, a bulwark against the lingering, sepulchral chill he couldn’t always shake.

She finished, secured the bandage with a disapproving little huff and then looked up at his face. He realized he must have gotten a bit teary when a wrinkle formed between her eyebrows—and there was the tenderness now, superseding the annoyance in her eyes. She cupped his chin in her hands and kissed his forehead gently before tugging on his left hand and pulling him to his feet, steering them both back to the lab.

He still didn’t believe in gods or devils. But he was beginning to entertain the possibility that love did have the power to resurrect a man from the dead, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I maintain that Monica Reyes actually has less tact than Fox Mulder, considering that the first couple times she talked to him (while trying to get him to do her a favor!), she kept bringing up the fact that she had seen him dead. Sheesh, Monica.


	5. Chapter 5

_Chessman State Mental Hospital_  
_Martinsburg, WV_  
_August 17, 2001_  
_7:00 PM_

Today was not going to go down in history as containing the best investigative work ever done in the FBI or even in the X-Files department. (Regardless of his loyalty to his current department, John Doggett did not harbor any delusions about its overall efficacy.)

He was irritated at their lack of progress, and, even worse, he couldn’t figure out how to move forward. They chased down tangential leads, called Dr. Richmond’s old hospital, interviewed most of the rest of Chessman’s staff, but still wound up with nothing useful at all.

Monique Sampson was awake now—badly shaken, uneasy, and still feeling the after-effects of overdose, but grateful for her apparent escape. She couldn’t offer them much in the way of leads they didn’t already have, though her story did seem to confirm it was Richmond who had attacked her.

She had thanked Monica, in a quiet, sincere voice, as the two agents were leaving, past the guards posted outside the hospital room door.

Monica had turned back and smiled at her warmly. “Of course—it’s my job.”

John hadn’t felt like they were quite so useless after that, but he was still frustrated by the feeling of being stalled, as he and Monica sat in Chessman’s employee lounge. It seemed as appropriate a place as any to sit and rehash strategy.

“We’ve followed up on what we could today,” Monica was saying. “We can try more tomorrow, but I don’t think we should go too far afield from this hospital. Whether Kobold is a genuinely helpful medium or an improbably-persuasive serial killer with an elaborate, proxy-based plan, I want to be close enough at hand to hear whatever he has to say next.”

John gave her a sharp look, but she returned it placidly. “Well, whichever of us is right about _what he is_ , we’re just sittin’ here, waitin’ for him to decide to drop us a clue, aren’t we?” _Who else will be killed while we’re waiting around here like this?_

He didn’t voice the last part, but Monica had clearly worked with him enough to hear it. “It worked out for me last time,” she reminded him.

As if the fate that John, by and large, did not believe in was trying to play a cosmic joke on him, Officer Custer picked that moment to race into the employee lounge.

“Agents? The Professor just said that I should come and get you. He said he could show you where Richmond is. At someplace called Happy Landing.”

_Happy Landing? Seriously? This just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?_

He and Monica looked at each other for a moment. “ _You_ don’t happen to know where that is?” Monica asked.

“Not a clue. Let’s try phone-a-friend.” He pulled out his phone and dialed a still-unfamiliar number.

“Mulder,” came the answer across the line.

“It’s John Doggett. Does ‘Happy Landing’ ring any bells for you?”

“...That usually depends on who’s asking.”

“Yeah, well, this time it’s Kobold. He just claimed to the guard that he knows where we can find Dr. Richmond. Apparently he’s at a place called ‘Happy Landing.’”

“Wait a minute—shit! ... _Shit_. There’s a little marina near Annandale. It’s on State Road 710, right on Scully’s way home, which...she’d be on her way right now. And considering the recurring target of Kobold’s little fantasies... oh _fuck._ ”

“We’ll notify the local cops, and then me ’n’ Monica’ll get down there as fast as we can.” He was gesturing to Monica as he said this, writing down the location Mulder had given him. Monica had immediately pulled out her own phone and begun dialing. He added to Mulder, “You stay put.”

“Agent Doggett, I don’t know what they may have told you about me, but I’m not about to take a baby to a possibly-active crime scene with a psychopathic devil worshipper. I _am_ going to call Scully to warn her.” And with that, he hung up.

* * *

_Happy Landing Marina_  
_Annandale, VA_  
_August 17, 2001_  
_8:00 PM_

The night was dark; the water was dark; sirens wailed; feet pounded.

The unnatural feeling crept up again, a dark miasma inching over her soul. There was something intensely not right, forbidding, _evil_. The very atmosphere was sick. It was stronger here than it had been in the Mountjoy house; stronger than when they had come upon the body of Gerlach. Stronger than when she had found Dr. Sampson. A bitter, cold spark of triumph.

“Game’s over, Mr. Doggett. You’ve lost.” From the backseat of a police car, Kobold was smiling almost triumphantly at John. John looked a little frantic at that, but Kobold apparently expected a stronger reaction. “Well? Aren’t you going to look for her? See what’s happened to her?”

“ _What_?! You son of a bitch...” John wheeled abruptly and headed out across the pavement.

_Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong  something’s wrong something’swrongsomething’swrong_

Monica hurried after John, trying to cover ground. A shout from one of the local police—they had found a body. Richmond, dead. Self-inflicted wound. _The game is over? What game? What’s the endgame?_

Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it was close to getting...whatever its goal was. But Richmond was dead. _“The game is over,” Kobold had said._

She had to concentrate. _What does that mean?_ _I’m missing something. We’re missing something. What is it?_

John had scrambled over to the dead body, was asking hurriedly if anyone had seen Scully. He received negative answers; he gave orders to canvass the area.

She could hear him as if underwater, stood halfway between John and the car, head tipped... _What is it? Where is it? Where is it?_ Her heart rate was climbing. _Something’s wrong; something’s wrong!_

A flash of movement; she whirled to see a man in a psychiatric patient’s dress running for the marina. She heard John’s voice shout a warning. Shots were fired; the man fell into the water. And then, out of the corner of her eye a hint of movement, the darkest shadow...

She raised her gun and fired.

* * *

_Dana Scully’s Office_  
_FBI Training Academy_  
_Quantico, VA_  
_August 17, 2001_  
_8:30 PM_

Dana Scully sat in her office at the FBI Academy, feeling a little irritated and slightly ridiculous, but also pensive. She wished this hadn’t happened at the end of her longest teaching day. She had a late class on Fridays, and had just managed to finish everything around six-thirty. She had been looking forward very much to getting home as she climbed wearily into her car for the long drive back.

Mulder had called her in the middle of her commute.

“Scully.”

He had dispensed with any introductory banter, but he did that sometimes if his brain was particularly busy. “Where are you?”

“Coming up on Annandale. You know, Mulder, maybe you were right about the commute. It might be easier to set something up in Alexandria.”

“Turn around. Right now.”

“ _What_!?”

“Go back to Quantico.”

“ _Mulder_. What on earth are you talking about?”

“Doggett called me. Kobold’s pointing them to that little marina you pass on your way home—the one in Annandale called Happy Landing. Says they can find Richmond there. But Kobold’s also been fixated on you—as some sort of prize or motivation or...something—behind me and Doggett. I would bet that he’s got your daily routine mapped; he knows where you’re driving and when. Whatever game he’s decided to play, you’re a part of it.”

“If there _is_ going to be an attack in Annandale, maybe I could save the victim.”

“ _No_ , you’re not listening to me, Scully: _You’re_ supposed to be the victim.”

“But Mulder—”

“Dana, _please_. We can argue about this all you want; just turn around—stay away from Annandale. The local police can handle whatever’s going on when they get there. You have no backup at all, and I can’t...There’s no way I can...” He had broken off, stumbling over his expressions, and she would have been incensed about the use of her first name if she had thought he was trying to manipulate her with it. But the raw fear and helplessness in his voice had seemed to indicate otherwise; she had mainly registered that his emotions must have been running terribly high.

Well, after all, she had granted him far more absurd things. “...All right. But maybe I could go to Alexandria instead. It’s closer than Quantico.”

“No—My apartment there’s deserted—there’s no one there to protect you—and it’s too close if Kobold’s expecting you to be at Annandale and then finds out you’re not. If he knows what I studied at Oxford, he damn well knows where I lived for eleven years. Quantico is covered in FBI agents, and it’s also on a Marine base—which is not normally something I consider a positive, as I believe you know.”

“What makes you so sure I’ll need protection?” She hadn’t quite been able to keep the sharpness from her voice. It was _his_ MO to run off recklessly without _her_ , after all, and she wasn’t in the habit of taking unnecessary chances.

“I didn’t mean—just— _please_ , Scully,” he had begged. The bald fear in his voice had tugged at her heart, even as much as she was not going to relish the extended driving.

“OK, OK. All right. I’m turning back toward Quantico now, Mulder. I’ll go back to my office. Call me when you hear anything new, and I’ll do the same.”

He had let out what seemed to be a deeply relieved sigh. “I—OK...I—thank you. Call me when you get there, so I know you made it. I love you.”

Thus she had come back to her office, where she was still sitting when she got a somewhat-frantic phone call from John Doggett. Which was the first indication she received that Mulder had not shared his determination to send her back to Quantico with anyone else.

“Scully.”

“Agent Scully! Where are you?! You OK?”

“I’m in my office at Quantico where Mulder told me to go because of a phone call he received from you—which is a strategy that he decided not to share with you, I gather. What happened?”

“I’m not entirely clear on that yet. Richmond’s dead, and so is Kobold, and so is...Officer Custer, I think. But you’re in Quantico; that’s good. It’s maybe something Mulder coulda mentioned to me; might’ve saved me and Reyes some tense moments, but I’m glad you’re OK.”

“Yeah, me too,” she muttered, somewhat absently. Trust Mulder to concoct a plan with details he didn’t fully share with anyone else.

* * *

_Scully/Mulder Residence_  
_Georgetown, Washington, DC_  
_August 17, 2001_  
_10:00 PM_

Scully was bone-tired by the time she finally got home. Adding the extra driving, the tense wait back in her office, and the nervous stress on top of her longest teaching day and the already-long commute had worn her out. She was grateful to find a close parking space, slipped appreciatively into her building.

She had called Mulder, very briefly, before she had left her office.

_“It’s over, Mulder. Doggett just called me—he said that Richmond and Kobold were both dead.”_

_“Oh thank god.” The literal meaning of Mulder’s relieved exhalation seemed largely inappropriate for the resolute position he had taken on this case, but she pursued a different angle._

_“He_ also _mentioned that you didn’t tell him anything at all about your intention to convince me to come back here...”_

_A wailing in the background interrupted her. Mulder sighed a little, sounding both shaky and resignedly fond. “I’ve gotta go, Scully. You can scold me later.”_

She _did_ have every intention of scolding him, at least some. She figured she owed it to John and Monica.

She opened the apartment door to quiet darkness. But Mulder was still up, pacing the floor back and forth with William (apparently sleeping) in his arms. He turned quickly when he heard the door open; some of the tension left his posture, and she could see the relief wash over him.

He moved toward her swiftly, his strides gaining definitive purpose. He met her just inside the door and kissed her with as much ardor as he could while his arms were full of a sleeping baby, then buried his nose in her hair. “Oh, Scully,” was all he could apparently bring himself to murmur.

She pulled back a bit to look at his face, held onto his elbows so as not to completely break the connection. Her resolve to scold him had melted away, at least for the moment. It was difficult to be irked with him when he was this desperate.

She glanced down to indicate William. Whispered, “Having trouble sleeping?”

Mulder followed her gaze to look down at their son. He matched her quiet tone, but his voice was a little unsteady. “Some. He fell asleep about half an hour ago. The pacing started out for him, but then it was more for me.” When he looked back up at her, there was a vulnerable frankness in his expression. “I couldn’t help you, and I could’ve lost you, and there was nothing I could do about it. I’m not used to being this helpless—I’ve never had to protect two people at once. You weren’t supposed to be in danger like this—you’re teaching—can’t the unspeakable evil in the universe just leave us alone for awhile?”

He was rambling, the words flowing from his mouth as the tension gradually loosened in his shoulders. She caressed his face. (She could still feel the scars under the stubble on his cheek, stark reminders of their joint mortality.) “You weren’t going to lose me, Mulder. I’m good at protecting myself. But it’s OK now; the case is over, and Richmond and Kobold are dead. And I wasn’t anywhere nearby when it happened. Thanks to you.” She was definitely not going to scold him, and she supposed she should have been resigned to this fact before she walked in the door.

After he put William down in the crib, he turned, pulled her to him, and kissed her with a deliberate thoroughness—as though he were trying to ground the both of them to the reality of their continued survival. When she fell asleep an hour later, her head was on his chest, their legs were entwined, and his arms were wrapped tightly around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my retelling, so I spared Dr. Sampson and killed Prof. Kobold while giving Monica a bit more to do. I think it was a worthy trade.
> 
> Note that in the show, Doggett and Reyes are in Weston, WV when they have to drive to Annandale, which is about a four-hour drive. When I was trying to figure out how to get them to the little airport in Clarksburg to leave immediately in a small plane with a serial killer, I realized I had to just move the setting.


	6. Epilogue

_Dana Scully’s Office_  
_FBI Training Academy_  
_Quantico, VA_  
_August 21, 2001_  
_10:30 AM_

Dana Scully was getting used to her new office—still moving in, shifting reference books and journals around. It was small, but clean and tidy.

A small, silver double frame sat on her desk. The left side held the old picture of her and Mulder in the field that had adorned the X-Files office. The right held a picture of their small family—the three of them—taken by her mother shortly after William came home from the hospital. It was, objectively, not the best picture of any of them. The lighting was questionable. She and Mulder both looked tired, bedraggled, and drained, and William had been fussy. But she loved the picture, anyway—the bright joy in her own eyes and the deep, slightly-awed contentment in Mulder’s made up for its aesthetic limitations.

A light rapping at her doorframe roused her, and she looked up from behind the desk with a smile to see the other two subjects of the picture through the open door.

Mulder was peering at the small plaque next to her door. He was holding the baby carrier in his unbruised left hand, tapped at the plaque with his still-bandaged right. “SA Dana Scully, MD. Forensic Pathology,” he read aloud, and looked up to give her a small smile and a slightly-wistful expression. “Hey, you finally got your own office with your own name on the door. And this one doesn’t come infested with a lunatic partner who takes up your space and drags you off at all hours.”

She stood up, started around the desk toward where he still stood at the threshold. “No. But it does come with enlivening visits from a brilliant, compassionate, attractive man with a beautiful, fascinating mind. And his cute son.”

He blushed a little, and she could tell he was pleased, but he tried to keep up the game, anyway—put on an air of being scandalized. “ _What_? You’re using this office to see another guy?”

She was now standing directly in front of him. He might have started this game, but she was going to win. “Shut up, Mulder.” She tugged his neck down and kissed him. For considerably longer than what would pass as a chaste, public greeting.

He wasn’t quite subdued, but he was a little out of breath, and his voice was too intimately quiet to have much teasing bite when he spoke again. “You gonna make a habit of kissing me like that in the hallway, Scully? You’ll damage our reputations.”

She directed a pointed look at the baby carrier, which she gently took from him, and turned to walk back into her office. Glanced back over her shoulder at him and tossed out, “You brought our infant son to visit me, Mulder. It’s quite clear that I have done far more than kiss you.”

He followed her in with a smile, and she couldn’t be sure which one of them had actually won. Oh well. She was used to living with a degree of uncertainty.

~

Monica was both relieved by the end of the case and perturbed by its outcome. Richmond and Gerlach were dead; Kobold was dead; Custer was dead. Darren and Evelyn Mountjoy were also dead. Monique Sampson was _not_ dead, but there were still far too many dead people for her to consider the case an overall success. She couldn’t satisfactorily explain to herself how she had recognized Kobold’s escape attempt in the final act of his plan, and she didn’t know how to explain it to John, either. Especially when she hadn’t suspected him of being anything more than a medium (a point which she had made multiple times to John).

“I just...knew,” was what she had said, when he had approached her at a jog after the confusion surrounding the gunfire had settled down.

The feeling of suffocating evil had evaporated as soon as the body hit the pavement. She hadn’t known what that meant, either, but the sudden change had made her feel nauseated and shaky on her legs. She had made her unsteady way back to the car, sat sideways in the driver’s seat with her feet on the ground and her face in the fresh air.

John had stared silently from her, out to the body floating in the water, around to where Richmond had been found, and finally back to where Kobold’s body was lying. He looked to be trying to absorb the events of the last half-hour before he finally said, “I don’t think Agent Scully’s here—I’m gonna call her, though. Make sure she’s OK.”

“Yeah, good idea.” She had scuffed her boots against the pavement and hadn’t been able to say anything more than that, and John had given her another piercing look before stepping a little distance away and pulling out his cell phone.

She and John had written up the reports, tried to close out all the loose ends that they could. They were almost done; the latest ordeal nearly over. She hoped the relief might come in time. Dana and Mulder had worked the X-Files for years: She wondered how many of their cases had left them with the same feeling of uneasy resolution.

Maybe she could ask them. She and John were currently sitting in Dana’s small office at Quantico, crammed across the desk from Dana (who was holding William, currently grabbing at her hair) and Mulder. It was a very small office to hold four adults and a baby. She could tell from the way that John was shifting that he would rather be standing and pacing now, and Mulder’s leg was jiggling. Dana occasionally tried to stop it with a hand to his knee, but it inevitably started up again once she moved her hand away.

“So, in the end, what’ve we got?” John was saying. “We know that he got his information on us from the internet—we managed to get the network admins over at Chessman to reconstruct his online activity for us. But apparently that research _predated_ the first time I talked to him. Which explains how he knew how we’d respond respond to the first killings. Why he staged them to look like satanic ritual, to make sure that we would.”

“He clearly wanted us on the case,” Dana acknowledged. “This was a game to him. But we still haven’t answered _why_ he decided to target _us_.”

John shook his head, looking tired and maybe annoyed. “Still got no ideas on that one.” He looked at Mulder, like maybe he’d be able to answer the question, but Mulder shook his head, too.

“I’ve tried to figure it out, believe me. The only rational explanation that I’ve been able to develop is that he was familiar with the satanic from his academic life, and it still held a fascination for him. Agent Reyes is an expert on Satanism in crime; maybe he found out about the X-Files department through an encounter with her work—became enamored of the idea that there was a department with the sole purpose of assessing unsolvable or paranormal cases. It’s still a weak explanation. But people like Kobold aren’t the most rational actors.”

“Whatever it was that made him choose us, he definitely wanted us to see how brilliantly he played the game.” John pulled a scrap of paper toward him on the desk and wrote “Daemonicus” on it. “We found this word at the first crime scene, on a Scrabble board. At the time, I thought it was overkill on the satanic staging, but...”

He underlined the first three letters. “Darren and Evelyn Mountjoy. Chosen from the phone book for the sole reason of their names.” He underlined the next four. “Monique Sampson, one of the doctors at the hospital where he was incarcerated.” He underlined the last three. “Officer Custer, a guard at the same hospital. Custer was a decoy—meant to distract us from his escape until it was too late. We were only supposed to figure out this puzzle and the depth of his cunning after he was gone.”

Mulder let out a low whistle. “Talk about the board game from hell.” He studied the letters for a moment, tapped the middle group. “Monique...or Monica,” he murmured. Monica had already noticed that connection, the first time John had figured out this name puzzle and then explained his theory to her.

“He does seem to have miscalculated there.” Dana was noncommittal on the validity of naming puzzles or possible variations thereon, but she nodded to Monica with a smile of acknowledgement.

“He was primarily focused on Doggett, and his reactions—and, to some degree, mine.” Mulder put in. “Even if he knew about Reyes’s study of Satanism, he never bothered to talk to her, like he did Doggett. He didn’t think about women as having any degree of agency; neither Scully nor Reyes were actual _players_ in the game in his mind.” He smirked a little. “To his obvious detriment.”

Monica wished she felt quite as sanguine about her own role as everyone else seemed to.

Dana frowned. “But, if what we’ve hypothesized so far is true, and Kobold was nothing more than an extremely sick and twisted man masterminding a game, how did he get his accomplices—Gerlach and Richmond, or even Custer—to do his bidding?”

Mulder shrugged. “Serial killers can be very charismatic and manipulative. Especially one like Kobold, and especially if he’s working on people who already have violent tendencies, like his cellmate.”

Dana wasn’t quite ready to let that stand. “But it also worked on the two guards: Custer and Gerlach. None of their psych screenings show anything that would explain their willingness to kill or _be killed_ for him. Was he really that manipulative?”

Mulder shrugged again. “It is true that I had my doubts about how well he could really perceive the inner workings of other people; a lot of the observations he prided himself on were actually self-reflective, and I don’t know if he was self-aware enough to really see that. Maybe it’s something we’ll never quite know.”

John spoke up, then. “What I still wanna know is why the hell you didn’t tell me ’n’ Monica you were gonna have Scully go back to Quantico, Mulder. You scared us half to death, and you were in the field long enough to know better than to keep secrets from other agents.”

Mulder sighed. “You took Kobold out there with you—I knew you would; you did it earlier. And I knew Kobold was expecting to find Scully. I could tell that he had some sort of fixation on her. And... I... look, I don’t believe in the Devil, as I’ve probably made clear. But I _do_ believe in evil. And I also believe in psychic ability. And even though I didn’t believe—I _don’t_ believe—that either was involved in this case, there are some risks that simply aren’t worth taking.”

“You didn’t tell _us_ because you didn’t want Kobold to know.” Monica spoke for the first time since her initial greetings and the requisite cooing at William.

“Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

John looked offended. “And you thought we were gonna tell him?!”

“...Not on purpose.”

There was pensive silence after that.

Dana sighed. “I suppose this is one of those cases in which not everything is fully, satisfactorily explained. We can only make an educated guess that matches a preponderance of the evidence. Which is a foundational principle I have to somehow instill in my intro to forensic pathology students in...about five minutes, actually.” She carefully passed William (who had apparently tired of her hair and fallen asleep) to Mulder and stood up.

His eyes were shining when he smirked up at her. “How do you plan on doing that? You just gonna write ‘Uncertainty’ on the board, Scully?”

She shot him a look that had too much underlying affection to be truly quelling. “I don’t know, Mulder. I just might.” She turned to Monica and John, before she went out the door. “Thank you both for driving down here to close the case out. I appreciate it.”

“Thank _you_ for all your help,” returned John. He glanced over to Mulder. “Both of you.”

“Y’know, Scully, we could always just invite them over for dinner next time. Less driving, better food, a lot less cramped.”

He was the recipient of another not-quite-quelling look before Dana left her office, walking briskly in the direction of the lecture halls.

John looked back to Monica and Mulder. “Well. Whatever conclusions we can draw from this case, and whatever we have to leave unanswered, it’s over. And I’m more than glad about that.” He stood up and stretched a bit. “I’m gonna go grab lunch before we have to drive back to DC—think I remember a decent place or two around here. You comin’, Monica?”

“Um, you go ahead—I’ll catch up.” She didn’t know exactly how to define what she felt, but she didn't feel like eating. She remained seated and pensive, stared at her hands and twisted one of Dana’s pens between her first and second fingers.

“You wanna talk about it?”

She looked up at Mulder, who was looking down at William, even as he was talking to her.

Ruefully, “It is pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been awfully quiet today, and I doubt you’re lingering here just to watch me annotate Scully’s scientific journals. The look on your face right now is one I’ve seen in the mirror often enough.” His eyes flicked up to regard her then; they were thoughtful and kind. Monica wondered briefly about the man behind the world-weary sardonicism that he affected.

“I believe there was evil in this case. I felt it. I _know_ it was there. My sense of it was why I fired when I did and where I did—how I knew Custer was just a diversion. It’s the only way I can possibly explain how I knew.”

“Maybe there was.”

“I don’t know what to make of it. I’m a trained field agent; I’ve been in plenty of tense situations, and I’ve _never_ been impulsive with a weapon. I don’t know what made me pull the trigger, other than a completely instinctive reaction. I never even suspected Kobold of wrongdoing throughout most of this case. So, let me ask you. Is it really over, do you think? Can evil be vanquished that easily? With a bullet? Is the path to salvation paved in blood? Or do you think it’s still out there, waiting for us?”

“Well, I can’t tell you anything about salvation. But I have seen plenty of evil men killed by mundane means, so yes. I believe you can eliminate _instruments_ of evil that way. As for evil itself, or what makes them evil? I truly don’t know. I studied evil men for a long time, and I never fully answered that question to my own satisfaction. I’m not sure if it’s _possible_ to know.”

Monica sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.”

“You’re the only person who can really answer any of those questions for yourself. What I think isn’t going to help you much. But if you _are_ interested in someone else’s answers, you might ask Scully, sometime. Her stories aren’t mine to tell, but her views are shaped by her beliefs and experiences, which are different from mine.”

Monica nodded, and they sat in contemplative silence for a few moments, before Mulder broke it.

“You know, he looks like my sister.”

She looked up—he was looking down at William again. She couldn’t see his expression, but his voice was soft and tender, full of wonder and tinged with nostalgia. Fox Mulder the man was turning out to be a very different entity from Spooky Mulder the legend.

“His eyes are hers—Dana’s, I mean—but... Maybe my mother would have told you that he looks like me, I don’t know; I never saw myself as a baby. But I remember how my sister looked. It was thirty-five years ago, but I still remember looking down at her in amazement when my parents brought her home.” He glanced back up at Monica with a small smile. “I, uh, haven’t told Scully that. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to say that your son looks like your sister.”

“I’m fairly sure that Dana, of all people, would appreciate that babies are all fairly androgynous.”

Mulder looked back down at William, ran his finger along his son’s cheek.

“They did run DNA testing on him—Scully had it done—I wasn’t—I didn’t...I think she did it because she was afraid. And whatever other miracles went into his creation, his conception was biologically ordinary, as far as that goes. But, you know, in the end...he’s my son. He would have been my son no matter what the DNA test said. And maybe a Jewish atheist shouldn’t speak for historical Christian figures, but I’m fairly confident Joseph of Nazareth would have told you something similar, if you had asked him.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she went with lightly irrelevant. “If I remember correctly, Joseph was Jewish, himself.”

“Yeah, you sound like Scully when I tell her to keep the Inquisition away from me.” He smirked a bit, and for a moment, she tried to imagine how _those_ conversations went. Or how they started. “But anyway, Agent Reyes, maybe that’s the lesson of Christian mythology that Josef Kobold—or whoever may have been working through him—never understood, or never cared to learn. That love is far stronger, deeper, and ultimately _more_ than mere possession.” A quirk of his mouth, then an acknowledgement, “However it is you’re choosing to define ‘possession.’”

The ensuing silence was a little easier, and Monica felt marginally better about the world. It wasn’t a lot, but it felt like enough for now. She stood up. “Thank you, Agent Mulder.”

“Just Mulder now, Agent Reyes.”

“Mulder. Call me Monica, then. Or Reyes, I suppose, if you’re absolutely stuck on the last names thing.” He looked up again and gave her a smile. She nodded to him and left the office, walked down the hallway toward the front entrance. Maybe she still had time to eat lunch with John before they went back to the Hoover building and back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was rather cathartic for me to write (and now I can watch the next episode of S9, finally), and I hope whoever read it (or reads it in the future) enjoyed it, whether or not you remember the episode. If you do, maybe you can get some catharsis from it, too. 
> 
> I owe @skuls internet flowers or something for leaving me lovely comments on every chapter of this thing.


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